Met Museum sued by family over Van Gogh painting allegedly looted by Nazis | US News

The heirs of a Jewish couple have filed a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York over an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that they say was looted by the Nazis.

The lawsuit alleges that the couple, Hedwig and Friedrich Stern, bought the painting “Picking Olives” in 1935, a year before they were forced to flee their home in Munich.

She says the Metropolitan Museum, which bought the artwork in 1956 for $125,000 before selling it to a Greek shipping magnate in 1972, “knew, or should have known,” that the painting might have been looted. Stern’s heirs are now seeking to restore the painting and compensate for damages.

“In the decades following the end of World War II, this painting looted by the Nazis was repeatedly and clandestinely trafficked, bought and sold in and across New York,” alleges the lawsuit filed this week in federal district court in Manhattan, and first reported by The New York Times.

The Stern family fled Munich and went to California with their six children in 1936 as a result of Nazi persecution, but were prohibited from taking the artwork, which the Dutch post-impressionist artist had painted in 1889, according to the complaint.

“Before the family emigrated, the Nazi government declared the painting ‘German cultural property’ and prohibited the Stern family from bringing the painting (and others from their collection) with them abroad. After obtaining permission from a Nazi official, a Nazi-appointed ‘custodian’ sold the painting in Germany on behalf of the Stern family, but the proceeds from the sale were deposited in a ‘blocked account,’ which the Nazis later confiscated,” the heirs’ lawyers said in the suit.

In 1948, or shortly thereafter, the painting arrived in New York and was purchased by Vincent Astor, one of the richest people in America, whose wife, Brooke Astor, served on the Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum from 1964 until 1983. It was later sold through a gallery to the Metropolitan Museum, which sold it to Basil Goulandris and his wife Elise in 1972.

In 1979, the Greek couple established the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation (BEG), which runs a museum in Athens where the painting is displayed.

The foundation and Basil Goulandris’ surviving nephew are named as defendants in the lawsuit, which alleges that the family “and related entities have concealed and withheld ownership of the painting and its location from Plaintiff.”

“To this day, the Goulandris defendants continue to conceal how and when BEG acquired the painting; the Stern family’s ownership of the painting from 1935 to 1938; and the facts that the Nazis looted the painting from the Stern family, forced the Stern family to sell it through a Nazi-appointed agent, and confiscated the proceeds from the sale,” according to court papers.

Stern’s heirs filed a similar complaint in California in 2022, but it was dismissed in 2024. The appeal was dismissed in May.

The Metropolitan Museum’s purchase of the painting was approved by Theodore Rousseau Jr., the museum’s curator of European paintings and “one of the world’s leading experts on Nazi art looting,” the lawsuit says.

“Rousseau and the Metropolitan Museum knew or should have known that the painting had likely been looted by the Nazis,” the court filing said.

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that it “takes seriously its long-standing commitment to tackling Nazi-era allegations”.

A museum spokesman said: “At no time during the Metropolitan Museum’s ownership of the painting was there any record indicating that it was owned by the Stern family – in fact, this information did not become available until several decades after the painting had left the museum’s collection.”

“The Metropolitan Museum’s sale of The Olive Picking met the Museum’s strict criteria for deaccessioning – specifically, it is on record that the work is considered to be of lower quality than other works of the same type in the collection. While the Metropolitan Museum respectfully stands by its position that this work has entered the collection and been deaccessioned lawfully and within all guidelines and policies, the Museum welcomes and will take into account any new information that comes to light.”

“The Goulandris Foundation is a very prestigious organization in Athens,” said William Sharon, the attorney representing BEG. “The attempt to prosecute and smear the Foundation and the Goulandris family in the United States based on incomplete and misleading allegations has been rejected twice previously. We are confident it will happen again.”